


on resurrection

by the_garbage_will_do



Series: broken chains [1]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Hurt/Comfort, M/M, No Spoilers, Rescue Missions, Torture, about to be rendered spectacularly canon-non-compliant, angst with a relatively happy ending, brief reference to canonical abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-18
Updated: 2019-12-18
Packaged: 2021-02-26 04:20:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,067
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21843571
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_garbage_will_do/pseuds/the_garbage_will_do
Summary: Kylo Ren is dead. Ben Solo lives on as a war hero.General Hux is dead. General Leia Organa announced this particular victory far and wide, to galactic applause.Yet Hux is alive in Ben’s dreams, tortured in a New Republic prison and incandescent with pain, and Kylo Ren rises once more.
Relationships: Armitage Hux/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Series: broken chains [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1573762
Comments: 8
Kudos: 92





	on resurrection

**Author's Note:**

> Set after an imaginary version of TROS that ends in Bendemption but probably not Reylo. Ben lives on, apparently committed to the light. Hux is missing in action, apparently dead at the Resistance's hands...
> 
> [Mairans](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Mairan) are gigantic, telepathic octopi, used by interrogators to detect lies.

Kylo Ren is dead.

He has surrendered the black mask. Resolved his contradictions. Sawed off the dark side like a diseased limb and cauterized the wound. Ben Solo has killed Kylo Ren, locked him up in a box and dropped him to the bottom of the ocean with the First Order and the rest of Palpatine’s tools. He belongs wholly to himself and ignores the twinge of darkness at his periphery. He shuts out every encroaching whisper.

When the dreams begin— glimpses of red hair and jutting cheekbones, layered duplicitous with Kylo Ren’s memories— Ben turns his back and waits for them to fade.

.

They don’t.

Hux never had learned to fade when he wasn’t wanted. He had sighed and groused and monologued his way through life, strident to the end. It would have been prudent— to protect the galaxy, to protect one's own back— to shut him up once and for all. Ben Solo, war hero of the Resistance, would have shut him up once and for all. 

Kylo Ren had let him live to nitpick another day.

Hux is gone. This is the story: the mastermind of the Hosnia attack, Snoke’s right-hand man, he shattered quick and bloodless like one more Imperial relic. Hux is dead. General Leia Organa announced this particular victory of hers far and wide, to galactic applause. Hux is silenced and irrelevant and—

Hux is gasping in Ben’s dreams, full of sound and drenched wet. His lips part as if in artless delight, but Kylo Ren knew his pleasure. No, pain cuts incandescent through this picture, nightmarish and oddly skillful. Hux’s soul bleeds through it all, reddens the cracks in Ben Solo’s mask.

.

The dreams refuse to fade. When Leia asks, Ben summarily denies the temptation. Surely these are not visions, just fictions, dark dangling threads from Kylo Ren’s life. Surely the Hux he sees cannot be: a seething mass of twitches, clothes torn, stripped of his troops and his rank and his dignity. His voice has gone sore. His mouth has gone wrongly quiet—

Ben shoots up in bed, panting.

.

A box splits open.

“Where are you going?” Leia asks.

“By your New Republic’s rules, interrogations only occur in humane conditions. Monitored prisons, elected supervisors. No physical violence.”

“By your rules.”

“What?”

“They’re your rules too, now.”

“I promise,” he says with acid sarcasm, “to follow New Republic law as well as the New Republic does.”

“Why?” she demands, too perceptive. “Why do you want to save  _ him?” _

.

He brings his old red lightsaber. He dresses all in black, and he tells himself it’s a strategic necessity to confuse the visual scanners. Whether his power flows from the dark side or the light he can’t tell. His own peace and purpose is shot through with Hux’s pain.

He can’t tell. He doesn’t care.

The New Republic has locked Hux in a top-secret prison ship. He breaks in with alarming ease. Wheels the Falcon around and cloaks its signal. Opens the prison ship’s hatch with a wave of his hand. Pulls the Force close around him and goes dark on the bio-sensors. He ought to visit the control room, ought to consult the full roster of prisoners to identify Hux’s room, but the walls of Hux’s mind have come crumbling down and his pain throbs bright as a beacon. Drawn towards Hux, he dashes through poorly lit corridors and pauses just outside a too-familiar interrogation chamber.

“Tell us where the Order’s backup databases are,” demands an unknown voice.

After a moment of silence, the room flares with crackling blue electricity.

“Dantooine,” Hux whispers, too quiet to be heard through the wall. 

And yet he hears. He ignites his saber, and he bites down on his black glove to keep from splitting open from laughter.

“Dantooine, huh?” says the interrogator. “You know we’re going to check that with our Mairan friend, right?”

Darkness flares.

He lifts his saber and carves open the cell door. Flings the smoking middle away with the Force. He drowns in the dark, and with a flick of a finger he smashes the interrogator back against the wall and ransacks her head, and it’s only Ben Solo’s pleading that leaves her unconscious rather than dead. He whirls around, expecting Hux to chide him for his tardiness or his unnecessarily flashy entrance. 

Hux’s eyes are closed. His skin gleams, damp and sickly pale. His clothes are drenched in cold water. His whole body dangles from a pair of stun cuffs pinned too high above him on the wall, splaying his limbs at unnatural angles. They snap open untouched with one snap of a wrist. He just barely remembers to catch Hux before he falls forward, dead weight dropping towards the ground.

He catches Hux, hard against his chest.

Breathing.

It’s shallow, but Hux is breathing. He pushes Hux back and assesses the damage. Twin electrical burns bind narrow wrists— these stun cuffs optimized shocks for pain rather than unconsciousness. The First Order had invented that particular modification, and the Resistance had no doubt enhanced it by soaking Hux’s whole body first. A necklace of blue bruises encircles Hux’s neck, as if Kylo Ren hadn’t been alone in his impulse to throttle him.

“Armitage?”

Silence.

“General Hux, if you don’t wake up you’ll  _ never _ be made Grand Marshal.”

Hux sighs.

“You came back,” he finally says, eyes closed, voice gone hoarse.  _ “You.” _

Hux’s pain bleeds openly into the room, yet the disbelief hurts more than anything else.

He resists the temptation to cup Hux’s cheek. To brush their lips together. Given Hux’s state, false hope could kill.

He can feel Hux working out the boundaries too, his thoughts too slow, the well-oiled gears ground down to slurry. Hux nods sharply and imitates a smirk. He lets himself be swept up, his frame light, half turned to air, one arm tucked under the knees and one slung around bony ribs.

“Ren.”

“What?”

“Don’t blow up their entire prison ship.” Hux’s eyelids flutter open for a moment, and the words are well-enunciated, though whispered. “No matter how tempted you are.”

“Is that an order?” he snarls in echo of their old war.

“Would you care if I gave you an order?”

“No less than ever before.”

Hux smiles. 

Hope twines hot with their rage as Kylo rises, as he cradles his once-general in his arms and strides back out into the darkness.

**Author's Note:**

> I meant to wait and polish this up a for a couple days, but I needed some hurt/comfort today *sniffle*


End file.
